Page 70 of Heap Earth Upon It

I didn’t say goodbye, just in case she came back. Maybe she will, one day. Maybe one day, I will ask Tom what happened. I know he’s done a lot wrong, but I’ve never been more grateful to Tom than I have been these last few weeks. Taking care of the hard things, like always.

Without Anna around, things have gone silent. The peace and quiet isn’t anywhere near as soothing as I had hoped it would be. I never thought I would feel anything as terrible as losing you, and yet I feel this. Teresa calls up to the cottage to see if I want to go to the pictures with her. I send her home. ’Tis quare liberation alright.

I’m afraid that feeling this way about Anna means that you and I are well and truly over. We have finally reached our end, Lillian. I know, because you would never have been with a man so bitter. Over the last year, too much has changed to sustain the dream of you and me. You, changed into some celestial being, far out of my reach. And me, changed into a man you would not recognise. I am only an abstraction of an abstraction of the man you once knew. Once loved. If we were to meet for the first time now, we wouldn’t fall for each other at all. But I will always know what it was to love you. Darling. My darling. I think it’s time that I let you go.

Go on, pet. I might see you again.

Tom

BILL PUTS A CUP OFtea in front of me. Somehow, it’s a nice morning. It’s the first morning that it feels like spring. I feel a little bit of hope. He spoons sugar into my cup and stirs it for me. Endlessly generous Bill – I cannot put into words what he means to me. He looks after me. He takes the pressure off me, just for a minute. In all of this grief and misery, Bill is an answered prayer.

Let this be the end of it now. Let this be the last sadness that ever passes between us. Let’s get over this as quickly as we can, so we can go back down to the field and enjoy ourselves. He can tell me I’m not like the other men in Ballycrea, and I can gather the courage to recite a poem while we work. Let us always work the land together. Living in an everlasting afternoon.

‘You were right, Bill. About Anna.’

There’s a lot of men wouldn’t dare cry in front of people. Well, if I could cry now, I would love to. At present, I’m afraid, I can’t feel a single thing.

‘I brought her to the convent back in Cork. We’ll go and see her when she’s settled.’

His face softens, and he reaches out, puts a hand on my knee and squeezes it.

‘You did the right thing, Tom. They’ll sort her out with whatshe needs. I was half thinking you’d put her in one of them lunatic asylums. Frightening places.’

I did the right thing. My God. I will let his voice echo around in my mind forever.

I did the right thing.

I did the right thing.

I did the right thing.

I did the right thing.

Betty comes through the kitchen with bedsheets in her arms, making up the spare room. She pauses, wanting to say something to me, but moves on. That woman doesn’t look at me right anymore.

Betty

THERE ARE SOME THINGS THATI cannot forget. Even when things have worked out quite beautifully, there are things I cannot make peace with. The false smile smeared across Jack’s face when he dropped Peggy up to us. The maroon dirt that stayed under Tom’s nails for a week. Hard to look past, aren’t they?

Bill painted the walls of the spare bedroom pink, and it became Peggy’s bedroom. He bought her a new bed, and she came with me to Flannery’s to choose her bedding. And still, those first few weeks, she cried, wanting to sleep on the floor. But she is settling. When Bill sits in his armchair by the fire in the evenings, she sits on his lap, and she likes his help with her lessons. We took one of Ciara’s puppies for her, she has a new fiddle and we’ll get her whatever she wants for Christmas. She comes home to me every evening after school. She needs me. I suppose I got what I wanted.

There was a little while when Tom would call in to see her after work. Peggy would be feverish to see him, and half afraid to see him. Last week, Bill dropped him to the boat. He will write to us when he meets Declan, Michael and Joe. Although he promised that he will send parcels to Peggy when he can, a part of me hopes that he won’t.

The odd weekend, Jack and Teresa come back from Clare to see Mary and the baby, and Ger Doyle. When they call to us, Jack stands back from Peggy, mostly. His eyes glossed, making small talk as thoughhe doesn’t know us. Asking her about school and her friends as though she isn’t his. Politely complimenting her manners as though she is mine. Each time they call, I expect him to usher her into the car and take her away with them. It’s clear by the way he looks at her that he wants to do nothing more. And yet, he leaves without her every time.

Anna has never come back. For a while, I was on constant alert, nervous to walk into the kitchen in case she was sitting at the table. Every knock on the door, every letter through the postbox, every flash of red in town was Anna in my mind. Peggy has been asking about her less and less. One day, when she is older, she will stop asking about her altogether.

By then I might be able to explain things to her a little bit better. I might have been able to make some sense of it myself. By then, I might have stopped mistaking the car headlights for Anna’s glowing eyes. I might look out the window without expecting to see her headscarf. I might have recovered from her.

When tucking Peggy into bed tonight, she catches me off guard with a question.

‘Will Tom ever come back from America?’

She looks so small in her bed. Based on my own experience, brothers that go to America don’t ever come back. I wish that somebody had told me a long time ago not to expect their return; I might have been a little less disappointed by it all.

‘I don’t think he will come back, pet.’

And she surprises me by smiling, and turning away to fall asleep.

‘That’s good.’

She sighs. Once more, I have a burning urge to ask her what exactly happened to Lillian Kealey. To ask whether she was afraid of Anna, and if she ever trusted Tom. But her breathing is evening out. She is falling asleep. I’ll ask her when she is older.